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Singapore Information Technology
After 1979 there was a single-minded emphasis among
policy
makers on escalating the level of technology in order to
implement
the succeeding phases of Singapore's industrial
revolution. They
relied on information technology as the strategy's
principal
instrument. The Telecommunications Authority of Singapore
(Telecoms) was a key to the strategy because of the high
caliber of
its services and products and because Telecoms and the
telecommunications industry had an important role in the
progress
of every industry in Singapore
(see
Telecommunications, this ch.).
A second key was computers and related electronics,
which in
the late 1980s constituted Singapore's largest industry,
measured
both in numbers of jobs and in value added by
manufacturing. In
1981 the 65,000 to 70,000 electronics workers comprised
about 7
percent of the labor force; gross production of
electronics at
about S$5.9 billion was about 15 percent of total
manufacturing
output. By 1987 electronics accounted for 28 percent of
manufacturing employment and contributed 31 percent or
S$11 billion
in output. By 1989, Singapore had become the world's
largest
producer of disk drives and disk drive parts. Other
related
products included integrated circuits, data processing
equipment,
telecommunications equipment, and radio receivers.
The electronics industry began a calculated transition
away
from labor-intensive products toward higher technological
content
and worker-skilled products in 1974. Potential investors
were
encouraged to look elsewhere for low-wage, unskilled
labor. Aside
from producing high value-added exports, the computer and
electronics industries played a vital role in raising
manpower
productivity in other technology-intensive industries
through
computerization and computer communications. The National
Computer
Board was formed in 1981 to establish Singapore as an
international
center for computer services, to reduce the shortage of
trained
computer professionals, and to assure standards of
international
caliber at all levels.
Copyright and "intellectual property" issues served as
an
impediment to computer and other industrial development in
the
early 1980s, when Singapore, as well as other Asian
countries, was
known for producing pirated versions of everything from
computers
and computer software to designer handbags. Following
threats by
their major Western trading partners to impose trade
sanctions and
by international computer and software companies not to do
business, Singapore passed its first copyright law in
1986. There
was fairly rigorous enforcement in areas in which Western
pressure
was applied (computer software, films, and cassette
tapes), and
nearly full compliance in the book trade, which had not
been as
serious a problem. The Asian "copyright revolution"
(Singapore's
was one of several such laws enacted in the region) was
significant
as a realization by those countries that they had joined
the
international knowledge network as producers as well as
consumers.
By the mid-1980s, the small but growing printing and
publishing
industry had entered the high-technology world with
computerized
typesetting, color separation, and book binding. Its
high-quality
printing facilities and sophisticated satellite
telecommunications
network made Singapore a regional publishing and
distribution
center in 1989.
Data as of December 1989
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